


the shape of grief

by ooka



Category: Black Panther (2018), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:21:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25514938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ooka/pseuds/ooka
Summary: The king is dead, they say.  The king is dead, long live the king.Shuri breathes, barely.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 6





	the shape of grief

“I love you,” she tells T’Challa frequently when she is younger. He is more than ten years her senior, and he laughs and replies back before swinging her around. She stops saying it with frequency as she grows. Reminds him of her affection with teasing and fondness, but swallows the words down when they rise up.

 _They are_ _siblings_ , her mother says fondly. _Look at how they tease and fight._

Her papa watches them with heavy eyes and had cut them off in rising fond teasing before it turned resentful and angry and like they were trying to wound each other with words, sharpened to points.

Through it all, T’Challa looks at her sometimes, and she can see he loves her, like she loves him. But there are moments when she meets his eyes and they are distant, focused beyond her. 

She wonders then, about her father’s grief struck eyes when he looked at them, and if he had been looked at or the looker.

  
  


There are rumors, of course, because there always are. They say she is the rogue one with her logical arguments and pressing for a future they should be all fighting for. That it’s better her brother is the heir because he has the right heart. They say her jokes are just the beginning of the rebellion she will stir up down the road. She will be their destruction.

 _It’s the past repeating_ , they say. _Two siblings whose very natures are at war until they both rip out each other’s hearts._

She hears it all and stores it deep in her heart, promises she won’t destroy her brother. He may destroy her, but she will never return the favor. 

  
  


_The king is dead_ , they say. _The king is dead, long live the king._

What she hears is, your father was murdered. Your mother cannot breathe without sounding like an animal that is dying slowly, inch by inch. Your brother was there, your brother may be next (king, dead body, who knows).

Shuri stands tall. Taller than she wants to. Wants to bury herself in her grief and reach for T’Challa like she did when she was younger.

Instead, she goes to the lab. She works.

She breathes, barely.

  
  
_Tell me a story_ , she used to ask her Papa on the nights when he could get away from the petitions, the council sessions or training T’Challa. When she was young enough to look up at him and see the sun and the moon and the stars, and think _I love you_ without anything begrudging it.

He would hum for a moment, going through all the stories he knew, before sometimes settling down to her favorite one. “There were once two panthers,” Her father would start. She would smile and clap before settling into his side. 

“They were brothers. The older one was to be the next leader and the younger felt lost, like he had no meaning in their claw.

‘You will be my left paw,’ the older one said. ‘You will be the one to help guide me and make sure I am on the right path, always.’ They both swore to this future and the Bast, oh how she blessed them. They led triumphantly until they brought all the animals together again. The elder always looked to the younger one and saw how much he loved their friends and family. How fiercely he loved.

The older knew he could never love that much and prayed to Bast that she would keep him close for the rest of their days. 

But there was trouble far away. There was a chance it would come to their shores, so the younger panther said, ‘Send me brother. I will find out what is happening and report back.’

With sorrow in his heart, the elder sent his younger on the perilous journey. There were messages passed to the elder that said the younger had betrayed him. He went to find his brother. He found his brother wearing a lion’s fur, and so unlike himself.

‘You have left me behind,’ the elder told the younger. ‘Come back with me, to home.’

The younger loved the new land too fiercely, though. ‘I will stay. I must help here.’

‘Do not go where I cannot follow,’ the elder begged. ‘Do not leave me behind.’

The younger looked at him queerly. ‘You left me first, for your throne.’

Then the two brothers left each other, and the elder missed the younger for all of his days, wondering if their paths would ever cross again.”

“To lose a brother would be very sad,” Shuri had said that night. “I would not like to lose T’Challa.”

Her papa had taken in a rattling breath before pulling her close. “I hope your paths never diverge my cub.” 

He had held her close that night, until she fell asleep in his arms.

  
  


When T’Challa comes back, there is protocol. He stands, like a triumphant hero. Someone who has righted many wrongs. Someone who has avenged their father’s death.

He comes back a King in all but name.

Mother welcomes him with all the love she has and is grateful for his continued life. She does not embrace him, but when they are behind closed doors Shuri knows they will cling to each other.

T’Challa is their mother’s. He may have been the heir, but he is her blessed child. The one they prayed for, and took many long years to take seed and come into the world. She places her hands on his cheek, and they three know she is shaking under her relief he came back, even if Papa did not.

Shuri looks into the distance and allows herself the brief moment of her grief swelling up, consuming her.

“Shuri,” T’Challa calls. 

She forces it back down and smiles, “Brother.”

  
  


Shuri wraps herself in the cloth of inventions, holding herself together with projects and the way T’Challa’s face looked when she showed him something new. 

She cannot bring herself to ask him to nit leave her. He has a new role, as King, and he is trying. He wants to do this right.

 _Bring forth a new world, one our father would be proud of_ , he says, once to her, late at night after their mother has gone to bed and they are both sitting.

 _Don’t leave me behind_ , she wants to say, but already knows he has. He doesn’t look back. He is going forward towards his future.

Her path is taking her to a different one, divergent and they don’t look like they will ever merge again.

She grieves in the dark of the night, but by morning, she is ready to continue forward.

She has always done as she must, that is what a she-panther does in this claw. 

  
  
  


T’Challa falls, and Shuri, for one brief moment, lets her grief swallow her. She has outlived two kings. She never wanted to outlive one, and now she has outlived two.

She is not meant to be a Queen, but she could win the title back for their family. All Shuri needs is time, a few familiar tricks, and a well placed shot. 

But that is not her destiny. She is to be T’Challa’s left hand. He takes care of the people and she handles the infrastructure and creates the things that will keep Wakanda progressing beyond what they have been. She was supposed to architect Wakanda’s future. He was the one who was supposed to lead it. She cannot do both. 

She feels so very lonely for all of a moment.

Then she must run.

Every step up the mountain, Shuri thinks, _the king is dead, long live the king_ and feels the thought rattle around her chest, like it's an empty room echoing her voice back.

She breathes, barely.

Shuri hovers as close to her brother as long as she can, when he wakes. There are many councils between the others, and often they speak of leaving her behind, like she is not standing but a few paces away. Shuri is filled with a fury that shakes her very bones. 

Later that night, when the others have gone to bed, she looks up from the fire to him. "I will come," she states. There is no bite, there is nothing to betray her beyond what her brother can read in her eyes. It has been a very long time since he has looked closely at her, so there is not much he can find.

"Shuri, Mother thinks," he starts, but she doesn't let any more protests fall from his lips.

"I will come," she repeats evenly. It is cold in the mountains. She draws her blanket closer.

He watches her, studying her, like he doesn't know her any more. Their paths have strayed for so long that maybe he doesn't. She knows him though, she clings to him as much as he allows. As much as she can bear. She can see the moment he gives in.

"Alright," he whispers, shoulders slumped like he has lost something dear already. 

He looks up to the sky filled with stars that are so much brighter up here on their snowy perch. She misses her lab, her projects, her routines, but she will miss this view later. 

"If I go down again, you must run. If someone comes for you, you must run," he says to the stars. 

Shuri longs to reach out, to feel the warmth of his skin, the beating of his heart under her hands. Anything to remind her that he is alive, and this is not a dream, with too large stars and her brother by her side once again. 

Instead, she pulls her blanket closer, again. "I will," she lies. 

She will not outlive a second king, not again.

T’Challa is sitting where Erik died, watching the sunset this time. Shuri takes a seat beside him. He doesn’t look up.

They sit there, still and carefully breathing. Shuri feels things stir up in her like, like an ocean stirring up in a storm, crashing dangerously upon her careful shores. T’Challa breathes like their father did once, like things were rattling inside of him and he couldn’t let them out.

“We watched the sunrise,” T’Challa says, voice deep with grief. “We watched the sunrise and he breathed his last, and still I wanted to save him, but knew he would hate me if I did. So I let him go.”

 _They will tear each other’s hearts out_ , she remembers. They were never speaking of her. They didn’t know, but she always did.

“I missed you,” she says, finally, giving shape to her grief. “I miss papa.”

T’Challa reaches out and touches the side of her face. “We will always be with you. We will always love you, even if we are not by your side.”

She leans into his touch, remembering the chill of his skin as he had lain in the ice. “Do not let your path stray far from mine brother.”

There is no recognition in his eyes at that, and Shuri knows that the story had been for her, and her alone. The child in the shape of her father, who held so much grief inside of him he nearly burst, and wished none of that for his own children.

 _Be better than I_ , his face had said in the blurry memories of her childhood. And maybe they were incorrect. Maybe that was something she had drawn over his visage in her own grief.

Still, it is a lesson she will heed. 

“Never,” T’Challa whispers fiercely. He places his forehead against hers and stared into her eyes. “We are bound together by blood, you and I. We are a claw, and I will never go somewhere you cannot follow. You are mine, and I am yours.”

If she was better, she would say _I love you_ , but Shuri is missing her heart. T’Challa took it when he tumbled off that mountain and hasn’t given it back.

“Yes, of course brother,” she stumbles over replying as she places her hand on his arm. 

He pulls her close and holds her tight for a long time, and Shuri allows herself to be swallowed by her grief, finally. 

(If she is honest, she would say he has had her heart for her entire life, but she realized she was missing it when he fell.

Her father looked at her and knew, knew the grief coming for her, and when he had called her "my daughter" he had meant so many other things than blood.

She knows that now. He hadn't just grieved his brother, he had grieved for hers as well, years before it was time for her to know the taste of it.)

She goes to stand by his side the next day when he is leading a meeting and she has been requested to join, with a handwritten, _I would like your help on reviewing this proposal_ , delivered to her desk. Because every once in a while T'Challa is a sentimental fool who refuses to use technology to make everything easier.

T'Challa looks towards her, distracted by the discussion but he still looks towards her, and not beyond her. 

She smiles and hopes he can see that she loves him too.

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be about Shuri in the aftermath of her father's death. Instead it became this (mildly twisted) deconstruction of her relationship with her brother.
> 
> :|


End file.
